Tuesday, March 31, 2009

By now this story, about some pathetic cult member who has pled guilty to the starvation death of her infant son provided the charges are dropped once he comes back to life (a condition I imagine the DA's office gleefully agreed to), has made the rounds. It would be easily to laugh at this kind of arch-stupid irrationality if it weren't for the fact it claims the lives of innocent victims. Here's a poor little kid who died because the adult charged with his care was a deluded idiot, in the thrall of similar deluded idiots. The cult she belonged to was something called "One Mind Ministries". Replace "One" with "No" and you're a little closer to the mark.

It's also tempting to comfort yourself with the reassurance that, at least, this is the sort of thing that takes place in lunatic fringe cults, and fortunately mainstream religion, risible as it is, doesn't go around killing and hurting its kids as much. This is the point where it's helpful to be reminded of the tens of thousands of kids sexually molested by benign, trusted, avuncular Catholic priests, and the numerous cases of parents, not belonging to some wacko church obviously on the farthest of far-out fringes, arrested and charged with killing their kids by refusing to take them to doctors for easily treatable illnesses, preferring "faith" healing and prayer instead.

Unreason kills. Period. That one form of unreason happens to gain mainstream acceptance over others makes it no less an example of unreason, and no less dangerous. It's time to deprogram, not just extremist nutjobs like Ria Ramkissoon, but the whole frackin' human race from this insidious thing called religious faith.

9 comments:

Hearing about these sorts of events really depresses me. But I'd rather know the sobering truth about reality than living as a naive fool.

I've been wondering to what degree the moderate/not-too-crazy religious base help to "enable" these fringe lunatics justify their actions. On my own blog last week I was debating with a Christian about that Wisconsin child last year who died from a treatable form of diabetes because their parents insisted on "faith healing". This person actually defended the parents for murdering their child because "they acted on faith" and then was talking about how death "isn't a big deal" to Christians because they get to go to a happy place in the sky.

I don't have the link handy, but I saw a story saying that the prosecution made it quite clear that this would have to be a "Jesus-style" resurrection. No claiming that the child was reincarnated as a potted plant or any such BS.

The article says that she is competent to stand trial, but I honestly do not understand how you can make such a deal and not be able to come back six months from now and say "read the agreement. I was obviously nuts when I signed it".

"This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection," Margaret Burns, the spokeswoman, said after the hearing. "It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

That the courts now have prescident on record for what qualifies as reanimation amuses me WAY too much.

So Jesus style resurrection==person is back alive, but what about a Frankenstein type animation where were repair the corpse and all? Would that be considered the same person just with brain damange/a different personality or a totally different person?

Well in a court of law I think Judas could get exonerated. There's enough reasonable doubt, no body, no produced order of execution, no legal documentation, and the people who insist that the victim did exist swear that he was alive after the alleged murder. If there's no body to see, Judas must go Free!

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.